America’s New No. 1 Song Is by a Group That Doesn’t Exist

SYNTHETIC POP CAN NOURISH THE SOUL. . .

slate.com

2 days ago

KPop Demon Hunters: How the Netflix hit's “Golden” finally topped the Hot 100.

Five and a half decades later, the dog days have once again been livened up by a cartoon combo serving up high-gloss bubblegum. In what has turned out to be an extremely dull 2025 musical summer, we needed a rescue—and South Korea has sent us, quite literally, some superheroes: the stars of Netflix’s smash animated movie KPop Demon Hunters, a power-vocalizing, monster-slaughtering girl-group trio who call themselves Huntr/x (stylized in all-caps as HUNTR/X and pronounced “HUN-tricks”). Like the Archies, Huntr/x does not technically exist, even though actual flesh-and-blood humans performed the group’s songs. That includes “Golden,” the soundtrack’s lead single, which hit No. 1 on the Hot 100 this week after a steady climb through most of the summer. Like the TV movie it came from—the sleeper hit of summer ’25, and now Netflix’s second-biggest movie of all time—the stirring “Golden” is a reminder that televised confections have generated some of our sturdiest hits. Synthetic pop can nourish the soul.